Real Romania - Real Estate and Travel Informations

Monday, May 29, 2006

Bird Flu in Romania

In Romania bird flu evolved in two waves, one month one after another.

First wave: Firs cases of bird flu were signaled last autumn in the Danube delta. The virus was suposed to be carried by the migrating birds and infected some of the local domestic birds. The authorities were promt and managed to keep under control the flu, euthanising the chikens and desinfecting the areas.

Second wave: The second wave of bird flu started this spring, one month after they eradicated the first outbreak, not from migrating birds but from a poultry farm in the county of Brasov, in the middle of the country.

Apparently they didn't realise that the birds were sick and sold some of them alive to the small farmers in the surrounding villages. Because of that the virus spread rapidly through the country, today beeng recorded 88 bird flu outbreaks and 23 suspicions. Most of them (29) are in the county of Brasov, but other 13 counties are affected and also the capital city of Bucharest.

The authorities also respoded imediately, as we speak in 79 outbreaks they finished euthanising the birds and started desinfection and in other 7 cases they finished everithing and introduced live chikens to test for the virus. In this operations they euthanised almost 1 million chikens.

This outbreak of bird flu affected the local tourism (mainly in the county of Brasov - beautiful mountain area - and in the Danube delta) and economy. Because of the pannic created by the speed of the plague and the fact that a poultry farm started the whole thing, the population stopped buying chicken meat, causing some of the farms to close production. There was a case of a farm that asked for permission to seal the chickens inside the buildings and let them suffocate to death because they could not afford to feed them anymore.

I've heard on the news that a man died in Indonesia raising the number of victims to 35 in this country. They even suspect that the virus can transmit directly from human to human.

Fortunately there is no case of humans infected with bird flu in Romania.


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home